Petaluma, CA’s Rancho Feeding Corporation made headlines back in
February after the USDA began to recall around 8.7 million pounds
of tainted beef carcasses, oxtail, liver, cheeks, tripe, tongue,
veal bones and other exports that were shipped from the
California slaughterhouse between January 1, 2013 and the second
week of this year.

After investigating the goods, the USDA eventually blamed Rancho
for shipping meat that was “unfit for human food,” later linked
to have come from cancerous cows that were chopped and sold for
beef with seemingly zero regard from Rancho’s staff. Earlier this
month, documents obtained by CNN lead the news network to believe that
Rancho was buying diseased dairy cows and simply processing them
at times when government inspectors weren’t on site.

At the same time, though, those documents also now suggest that
an unnamed Rancho Feeding Corporation foreman had a personal
relationship with the USDA inspector whose job involved making
sure that the company’s products were fit for consumption.

Previously unpublished emails, CNN reported, show that USDA
inspector Lynnette Thompson was intimate a number of times with
the foreman, further demonstrating yet more disturbing
information about a slaughterhouse in disarray.

According to CNN, an assistant Rancho plant manager sent emails
to higher ups at the USDA last December letting them know about
the relationship between Thompson and the plant foreman.

"He said he went to her trailer three different times and
they were intimate," the assistant manager wrote the
regulators. "She also sent him a picture of her naked back
side in a tanning salon to his cell phone."

Elsewhere, the employee told the USDA that the two exchanged a
number of suspicious text messages, including one where Thompson
wrote the foreman, “I need a kiss.”

“Thompson had reason to worry,” CNN investigative
correspondents Chris Frates and Shannon Travis wrote last week.
“The USDA’s own ethics manual says its employees should not
be assigned to an establishment where ‘they are engaged in a
personal relationship with an establishment employee.’”

Now as investigators stay focused on the Rancho scandal, new
questions are being raised about whether the FDA inspector’s
inappropriate relationship with the factory foreman may have
played a role in the major recall. A former owner, however, told
CNN through an attorney that the relationship between the two was
in no way connected to the recall.

Previously, the USDA admitted in the midst of their investigation
that issues pertaining to the inspection procedure had been
discovered while probing Rancho Feeding.

“The ongoing investigation is associated with the company’s
intermittent circumvention of inspection requirements,” a
spokesperson told a San Francisco-based CBS affiliate in
February.

Speaking to CNN, United States Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California)
said he’s concerned the USDA is hiding even more egregious
behavior.

"One would speculate at this point that in order for there
[to] have been a deception that allowed a whole bunch of
improperly processed meat to get certified for sale, someone at
USDA was deceived,” Huffman said. “Something must have
broken down in their process too. So, in the absence of
information, I am left to believe that maybe they're a little
concerned that they dropped the ball, too."